Alessandro Michele staged his first surrealist-tinge couture collection on Wednesday, guests exiting a dire downpour and into dark chasm inside the former stock exchange of Paris.

He entitled the show “Vertigineux”, and one almost suffered vertigo rising through a dramatically stacked row of benches – in near pitch darkness.  
 
A bank of black speakers droned out industrial noises before a giant black theatre curtain. On each seat was a bizarre catalogue of lists: ideas, emotions, fabrics, historic figures, expressions, stitches or fashion expression. Denoting anything that Michele felt when he looked at a particular garment. 

The same words appeared in bright red on a giant black background, “like highway signals you don’t want to watch but have to,” Michele explained post-show.  In a genius piece of staging, a pixelated one-meter-high number appeared as each model poised center stage. 
 
Opening with a whirling dervish dress in bright harlequin pattern, setting the scene for a moment of theatrical couture. And a great deal of Valentino Garavani’s sense of grandeur: with diaphanous skirts topped by cock feathered tops; dense lace-layered and ruffled dresses; shimmering grand guignol ball gowns; or scalloped sequinned pajamas under micro-plissé cloaks. And of course, a sinful red Valentino chiffon gown, that the founder would have loved.
 
Michele explaining post-show, that in the house’s archives, he discovered Sir Val’s love of the aristocracy and the Bel Mondo. Arguing that his signature red dress could have come from Renaissance oil paintings “or maybe a Goya image of a Cardinal in red.”
 
One sensed Michele discovering the crinoline and going a little crazy with the technique. Locating the clothes somewhere between “Gone With The Wind” and a Venetian Ball. But also, between leaving Gucci and joining Valentino, watching a fair few dark and intense Balenciaga shows, whose designer Demna sat front row.
 
“The show needed that sense of an epiphany where you discover something,” the Valentino couturier opined.  

See catwalk

Alessandro’s charming idiosyncratic ideas led to some magnificent looks: a layered chiffon gown with train paired with a swimming costume and sequined bird of fantasy balaclava; a camouflage floral “Wuthering Heights” ballgown, the model with a diabolical hand and foot-long withered fingers; and a golden silk jacquard courtesan’s suit with matching tights and buckled court shoes, the model’s head bedecked with gigantic plumage. One exceptional train looked composed of four-meter-long feathers in a superb visual pun. A quarter of the cast wore hats, skullcaps or berets – in lace, felt, sequins, feathers and jewels. 
 
Classical couture clients might find these clothes tricky to wear, but as an image maker fashion has no one who matches Michele.
 
The show rising to a crescendo – mixing a soaring soprano with Grischa Lichtenberger’s darkest pulsing sounds, before Michele took his bow.
 
Yesterday, in the first press conference of the second Trump era in the White House, press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted that the first questions came from social media influencers and not legacy media. Today in Paris, Michele sat the legacy media in the fourth row – unheard of traditionally – but at least he invited them for a post-show conference, taking his seat on a gilded Louis XV chair, to philosophize about couture.
 
“Couture is three-dimensional fashion. I don’t own these dresses I just bow before them…. I am not a tailor, maybe not even a couturier. I don’t know how to sew. But haute couture was an extraordinary journey where I learned so much, techniques I never really understood- like intarsia or certain ways of sewing. The other element about couture I loved was time, something people like me don’t have that much of when creating fashion,” he revealed.
 
Asked to explain the title, Alessandro responded: “Vertigineux, like couture, is a moment when you are afraid to lose yourself but must be stable. Haute couture is an insidious thing. You must know when to stop. I remember when I realized I had thought up a look that contained 350 meters of fabric and that to me was molto surreal!”